A Baptism and In the Presence of Elder Rasband

Dear Family and Friends,

This week truly was a long one, but oh so worth it! I am so very grateful for the Love my Heavenly Father has for not just me, but every one of his children. He truly has shown his love to me this week and I have felt his love for others as I have served them! Also Happy Birthday to Grandma Great this week!:)

Here is how my week went!

Week March 13th - 19th 2017

Monday: 

I am a horrible brother! My sister Whitney had her Birthday yesterday, along with having her baby's, and I never even told her happy birthday or anything! I feel really bad! However, I know she understands I am super busy and my brain sometimes forgets things! So today being Pday we were able to get haircuts, well my companion did, and then we went had a good time with Elder Arendt and Elder Buldoc. They are in the Spanish Ward and are super awesome! We were able to go and play some basketball and get to know the Zone as we played at the California Building. We played for a bit and then Elder Hooper and I went and helped some members move and organ! It was super heavy, but we were glad we could help! As we got done we went to dinner with the Quien Family and Sister Quien is a healthy eater and made us Italian food and it was super good, and literally just veggies! We even used Italian dressings like oils and vinegars. It was actually really good! So we have been searching for an investigator in the YSA Ward who has a date for this Saturday, and so this evening we went by his house with no success, but we won't stop until we find him! We hope soon! We have the faith and works to keep his date and keep preparing for this Saturday!

Tuesday:

Well today was a true building of my faith and testimony! So today we had the chance to go by and have a contact and lesson with Deshawn, an awesome investigator who is reading and watching Doctrine and Covenants from the BYU channel, along with Devotionals. She is super in love and just struggles to get to church with 4 kids and having it hard to get them ready! She, however is planning on coming. So today we had the blessing of going out and trying to contact some of our YSA members and it wasn't a huge success because of the Spring Break and everyone not being in town, but we did find a few people which is good! And then for dinner tonight we were able to go and eat with the Bernard's. Victoria and Jared. We are teaching Victoria, the wife, and she loves what we teach and says it makes sense, but is hard with understanding how she feels with things. We taught Alma 36 and talked about the fact that God will forgive her and listen to her again and help her to feel his love and peace. She truly was thinking and Elder Hooper and I were able to teach with wonderful thought provoking questions that made her really think well. I struggle asking good questions, but know that many times if I just listen that God will give me what I need to say. As we finished up there I had the chance to go out on exchange with a member in our ward that is pretty less active. He is less active because he feels that the church is false and that God doesn't love him. He has been looking at anti Mormon literature, but comes out with us to help us drive around and can teach like we do and answer questions correctly, but he does it against his beliefs, because he doesn't believe in the things we do now. It was a crazy trying to just avoid a bash. All he wanted to do was debate and it was frustrating, because everything and all he wanted was a Sign. He wouldn't believe God loved him until God said it. We wouldn't believe that God created Eve out of Adams Rib, or that Jesus came to be because of the Spirit of the Lord in Mary without scientific evidence. I had a lot of things I could have said, but everything I did say he would twist on me. He was not rude in anyway, but what I learned is that Evidence is not everything. The Mysteries of God cannot be revealed to those not ready. He has questions because he doubts and wants a sign. He has no faith. I left that truck with determination to study harder to be able to defend myself and God. All in all it was a great night!

Wednesday:

I am so grateful for the way that setting goals has changed my mission! And also how much members have made my mission amazing! It amazes me how much members truly can be a huge part of the success we have as missionaries, and today I feel I learned a huge lesson on how to help them even more! To start off our wonderful day I was able to drive another elder in our zone to a doctors appointment in Carrollton, and it was super nice just getting to know and understand him better and am grateful for him! He has gone through a lot and always tries to be positive. We also had an experience I won't forget. Since last week we have been working and striving. Setting goals and working at them to find Jesus, our investigator who has a date for this weekend. He fell off the face of the earth and we had joy contact, until today. Randomly he text us and said hey. So we called so excited he responded and went over promptly to see him happy and still ready for baptism. He had been on a ROTC trip and had just returned and said that Satan had been working at him and he wanted us to pass by more often! It was awesome and he will have his baptism this weekend! The rest of the day was wonderful being able to eat with the Thorsen family, who have a giant home and are super sweet! As we talked we were able to set a goal for them to set a baptismal date and have a baptism when their son gets home in 6 months. So they are now looking for someone to work with! Then in general evening we contacted a family who is less active and really had a good lesson about coming back, but mostly showed we cared, and it really seemed to work amazingly well!

Thursday:

Today as a planning day has been so crazy! We thought we would only be planning for the week when we received a message from Jesus saying he wanted to have his baptism Friday instead of Saturday, so we had to stay in the house until around 4 with weekly planning and planning for the baptism and contacting everyone and making sure we have everything prepared, and when we had done all of that Jesus found it he had to work!! So we called him and got it figured out so we did put have to switch up our plans. All in all we had a wonderful day where we were able to have a wonderful dinner with the Peal couple in our ward. Sister Peal was the First person I saw as I entered the temple. She was at the time the wife of the temple president, Brother Peal. And she was so happy and sweet! So I told her that and she gave me a huge hug! Another thing we did with them was talk about setting a baptismal date for a goal of working with someone, and it was so amazing to see them excited. Sister Peal got up right then and went to visit with the lady in the restaurant who was helping us. She talked to her for 5 minutes and came back saying, "she has no church and is looking and we will be back here Saturday!" It really was powerful to see how the goal she set already helped her and pushed her to look for people to teach! It states in Preach My Gospel page 146 “I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” (–Elder M. Russell Ballard) I have seen this a lot as a missionary where when I don't set a goal,for people to contact I never stretch and actually try to make any contacts or anything, but as I do try and set goals and reach them I see amazing results! This evening we had the opportunity to go out with Ethan Starkweather, a return missionary that served in Taiwan and got home a month ago. He is super spiritual and actually was baptized at 12! We were able to go by and have a wonderful lesson with Taresa, a lady I contacted into a week ago on an exchange, and she was wonderful! Not super understanding of what we teach, but does know the importance of God in her life! It was just a wonderful day and to end we had a FaceTime lesson with Taiwo and Juwon, twins that were baptized recently a few weeks ago! They are so awesome!

Friday: The Baptism Day of Jesus Rubio!

Today was such a wonderful day! These are the days I look forward to as a missionary. Watching these people to have come to love and search out to reach the point of knowing and acting for themselves! This morning we were able to give service and help a few members just to understand we are there to help them when needed. It was super wonderful and then to end the morning we went and had a language study with the Spanish district and a lesson with Jesus about minor details to be aware of. He was pumped and was on his way to get his hair cut. So we had a wonderful dinner with the Speirs family, a family where their special daughter, Hannah, is a super star on the Texas Ranger Team. She is famous for being a happy dancing usher at games and she has the calling of the ward hugger in our 6th Ward. She is very smart and loves to read her scriptures! It was wonderful being in their home and seeing hem understand they have a purpose in their lives and it is to share what they have, and they are actually excited to share it! So tonight the baptism started late, but we had 2 investigators show up and it was just so nice to get to know the YSA members better! One of them was a young man named Aaron who is super interested in our religion and we invited him to take the lessons and he agreed to it! Both Aaron and Jesus were very welcomed in the ward and it just made me feel good to know That! I love so much where I am serving! What a wonderful day! 

Saturday:

What a Spiritual and tiring day!! The reason I say this is because this morning we were able to sit at the feet of Elder Rasband, Elder Halstrom, Elder Willas and Presiding Bishop Cosse. It was so incredibly amazing and uplifting! For 2 and a half hour we say and learned the most inspiring words! Also to make things even more nerve racking, I sang in a quartet for this Mission Wide Meeting! We sang Come thou Fount arranged with the words of Joseph Smiths first Prayer. And the arrangement was done by Elder Broberg. It was super amazing, but to help you understand my nerves better, I was the soloist and my voice when we started at 7:30 am did not want to work at all! I tried and tried and nothing would work! as we prayed, Elder Broberg prayed that my voice would be clear and strong when we sang. As he said those words I trusted in God. I have never used that kind of Faith and as I did so I was amazed that literally right before the performance my voice was clear and our song without the piano was so pretty and Elder Rasband called us out after the song and had us raise our hands and as we did he looked us in the eyes and thanked us for bringing the spirit into the meeting. He is one of my new favorites. Also I have some amazing insight that Elder Rasband will be speaking in the Sunday Morning session and Presiding Bishop Cosse in the Priesthood session! Here are a few things that caught my attention! 

"Ever since the morning of the first vision the heavens are opened and god speaks to a prophet to guide us!" - Elder Willas 

"Jesus Christ should be the Center of your Mission!" - Bishop Cosse

"I hold the Salvation of Souls in my Hands." -Bishop Cosse

"We do these meetings because we expect that the Benefit is greater than the Cost!" - Elder Halstrom

"I want you to hear it from me. You are all here in Texas by Revelation from God!" - Rasband

"The Leaders of this church are no Strangers to the Voice of the Lord." - Rasband

And lastly,

"Focus Now 100% and he will bless you all,he days of your life." - Rasband

I know he was called of God and is a Prophet, Seer in these last days!

Sunday:

Oh how I love Sundays and also can't wait for them to be over! I guess it would me mixed feelings, because this morning we were awake at 5:15 am to be over at the other Spanish elders apartment so Elder Hooper could be with them while I got picked up by a member to go to one Ward and he went with them to the other for Ward Council. Then after sacrament meeting they came and switched me and I drove back with the Spanish Elder and Dropped him off at church and I got picked up by a YSA member and went and gave a talk in the YSA Ward. It was very focused on Member Missionary Work and I loved it so much! Also while there I realized that Aaron Cole, an investigator, was there and loved my message and even more important, he learned a huge amount about the fall of Adam and Eve and was very blown away! Then after church it was so fun to see him just decided he wanted to be apart and is going to play the piano in the YSA choir. And we finally set our first lesson with him and his good friend who is a member in our ward, Kevin Stanfill. As church was over we had a really good lesson with the Bernard Family where Victoria actually read 4 chapters and is reading nightly and reads in the Book of Mormon guide. It was so cool and now she just has to pray and feel. The problem is that she feels that she is bad with feelings and will get it wrong. I know she can feel it is she keeps trying. The last thing I learned tonight was to not be afraid to go to potential or past investigators, because we passed by a David Smith, and as we met him he said the missionaries just stopped passing by and he still has questions, and so now we set up another lesson and it was so great to see him happy again! What a week!

I love all of you so much and hope that you know I truly am grateful for all you have done for me! Have an outstanding week!

Con Amor,

Elder Spendlove

De la Misión de Texas Fort Worth